Flipkart all set for a fashionable makeover

Online retailer Flipkart will invest heavily in its fashion vertical this year as the company wants to ensure that one in every five fashion products they sell will be exclusive to the platform.

The homegrown player is trying to position itself as the country’s ‘fashion capital’ as they target customers from every segment to tap into the $100 billion overall fashion market in India.

“This year we have a goal that more than 20% of what sells of Flipkart has to be co-created between Flipkart and a partner or would come from an exclusive brand,” said Rishi Vasudev, who heads fashion at Flipkart. “Earlier it was not a focus area, so only some selection within fashion was exclusive to the platform.”

This development comes after Flipkart recently announced that it exited financial year 2017-18 with over $1 billion in sales. They expect this number to go up to $1.7 billion for FY19, riding on the back of exclusive offerings, co-creating products with brands, among others.

Flipkart all set for a fashionable makeover

The online fashion market, which is about 5% of the overall fashion market in India, is pegged to grow at 38.2% CAGR from 2017 to 2022, according to industry estimates.

Experts tracking the retail space believe that online commerce players like Flipkart and Amazon India are targeting fashion for the short-term growth as the share of smartphone in online retail sales is expected to go down from 45%, while the share of fashion is expected to rise from 20%. Currently fashion forms about 35% of the overall sales for Flipkart, peg analysts.